Make sure call tracking is on your shopping list this Christmas

The holiday season is fast approaching (if you can believe it) and it’s the time of year that everyone looks forward to – either for an extended rest or because it’s the busiest time of the year for your business. With Australians expected to spend over $48 billion overall including $2.8 billion online this holiday season, this year will be no different.

In fact, in the year to December 2015, Australians spent a whopping $18.1 billion online – and this is expected to increase.

If the holiday season is one of your busiest periods, it’s important to plan accordingly, which means having all the tools in place to maximise your opportunities.

While 2016 may be too late for you, its never too late to plan for 2017 and beyond.

Online Advertising – The December Quarter

The December quarter means online advertisers ramp up expenditure in the lead up to the Christmas period and subsequent sales. According to IAB Australia, over $1.89 billion in online advertising was spent in the December quarter in 2015 – an increase of 21% on the 2015 September quarter. This growth trend is expected to continue in 2016.

Online Advertising Spend CY 2015 by Advertising Type

Source: IAB Australia

Maximizing Your Opportunity

During busy periods, it is not only vital to maximise the opportunities presented to you but also to get bang for your buck on your advertising spend – especially if you expect to increase it.

Getting bang for your buck means two things:

Capturing every inquiry made to your business – whether this is by phone or online web form – to give your business the best opportunity to succeed.

Getting detailed information on where your leads are coming from – providing you with a more accurate picture of how your marketing or advertising campaigns are performing.

An effective call tracking solution can ensure every phone lead is captured and provide data on which advertising sources are delivering phone calls.

Already, businesses are not attributing 49% of their leads to phone calls. This means they are not getting an accurate picture of the success or failure of their marketing campaigns.

With 61% of callers still relying on the phone to make a purchase, can you afford not to be tracking where your calls are coming from at a time of year where online adverting spend increases, especially if the path to purchase involves a phone call?

How Call Tracking Can Help You

At its most basic level, call tracking can provide information on how many calls your business is receiving on a daily, weekly or monthly basis.

At its next level, it can help you track which specific advertising sources are delivering phone calls, down to the individual campaign or ad level. This allows you to work out which campaigns and advertising sources are delivering phone calls. Using this data together with your web lead data, you can calculate a more accurate cost per lead.

You can also use this information to optimise your advertising campaigns by either reducing or cutting spend on campaigns which are not performing or increasing spend on campaigns that are.

However by taking the solution further and integrating into Google Analytics, AdWords and a CRM such as Salesforce, you can ensure that not only no call to your business is missed but you can also more accurately work out campaign ROI and Cost Per Acquisition as you will be able to link sales data in your CRM back to the original lead source.

So whatever this holiday season means for you and your business, the most important thing is to be prepared. If you are launching new paid search campaigns, increasing your advertising spend and anticipating an increase in the volume of phone calls your business will receive, make sure you have call tracking on your shopping list so you can maximize your opportunities so you can have your most successful Christmas.